{ [ FIRST YEAR ] an mlp anthology

excerpts :

from Y2K by Ken Baumann

&

our hero finally bends

to the oncoming fiscal crisis.

& he starts small; writing HOPE on index cards & leaving them scattered through unappreciated state universities, taking care of his neighbor's small army of dogs, supporting the farmer's market through osmosis, & eating only from the seeds of the sown onion tree.

&

our hero buys a cadillac

& fills it with goosedown pillows.

& he amasses a following; a sudden & urgent horde that only moves by bi-plane, a daisy field of preachers who lay down on the hour, & the elementary tract at the local school, because they all support our hero with water color affections.

from BLACK KIDS IN LEMON TREES by Shane Jones

001:

Looking over the edge of a cloud, I can see two people standing at opposite ends holding a giant banner. The banner reads: ALL YOU COPS ARE IN THE CLOUDS.

002:

When we first found ourselves stuck in the clouds we just stood there in our uniforms, ready hands on guns. Someone said, we’re stuck in the clouds. I looked around & counted 200 cops including myself. Including you, holding my lucky gun hand.

003:

I remember being on the ground. I remember falling asleep. I remember telling you that we are more than uniforms. Then your cop hat blowing back. Then, in the clouds. Then, the overwhelming desire to pull my gun trigger, swing my club. Our handcuffs are the stitching between clouds.

004:

I don’t know what we’re doing up here but down there buildings are on fire. When I lie down on a cloud to look over the edge, I feel the heat burning a hole through my stomach. My back is cold.

005:

We shoot our guns wildly into the face of the sun. If a bird cuts through a cloud we beat it with our clubs. Our dark blue uniforms, the swinging of steel ringed clubs in the strange, cloud-high sunlight.

006:

We don’t know what we’re doing up here when everything is going wrong down there. All us cops stuck in the clouds. Some jump off to try & save the world. Us others, we take turns shooting at each other from the far side of clouds. We hold hands & have evening orgies where we lick dicks & hips. An entire cloud filled with the tearing open of cop uniforms. All you see is naked limbs sticking up from cloud.

from IN THE RAPE YEAR OF THE GHETTO TODDLER by Blake Butler

In the burn house the Ghetto Toddler could not sleep.

The Ghetto Toddler’s throat had been scalded & engorged with lesions from the high temperature of his blood, caused by the doors he came to in his closed eyes.

Everyone the Ghetto Toddler had seen for the last eighteen years was blonde & connected by one cyst, a cyst that throbbed, a ceiling over the fuckyards.

The Ghetto Toddler’s temple bulged inside the vision of a woman standing in the air above his home. He could see her cooter peeking through the windows, the legions smoldered in the folds.

The Ghetto Toddler threw up into his pea soup.

The breakfast table flipped. The Ghetto Toddler did not notice where on the table’s belly someone had scribed a deleted bible verse in gray snot.

Under the breakfast table, the Ghetto Toddler saw through spackled eyes, there was a fortune cookie. The Ghetto Toddler bent low with his striped back, fluttered hot purple, in which ant colonies had gathered. The Ghetto Toddler picked up the fortune cookie with his chapped lips, as his arms had been removed.

The gashed sockets where the Ghetto Toddler’s arms had been were lined with bacon grease & perfect blood. Inside the left armhole a fluffy rabbit had begun to nest a home. The rabbit had eleven-hundred other rabbits gorged inside her, each of which she would release into the Ghetto Toddler, one by one. One of the eleven-hundred rabbits would have another eleven-hundred rabbits inside it, one of which would speak the name of God.

The Ghetto Toddler carried the fortune cookie with his cracked teeth, to press its crunch against the home. The Ghetto Toddler bashed his half-hung mouth in repetition. His teeth bent & splintered. The cookie would not crack.

Inside the Ghetto Toddler’s left bicuspid there was a hole that went way down: further than the length of the Ghetto Toddler’s body, further than the earth. The hole ended in a pit of gnashing where other babies were being turned into pea soup that the Ghetto Toddler would feed one day to his own toddlers. The Ghetto Toddler’s babies would be colored taupe & cream & would cure blindness, though by then there’d be nothing left to see.